Just Neighbors, Right?
by AGirlAndABeast
Summary: A final semester in college lies ahead, but Sansa can't do it without her best friend Jeyne, who might just lose her soccer scholarship due to a shoulder injury. Sansa finds comfort in an unlikely source: her neighbor at the Red Keep.
1. Chapter 1

**Summary:**

A final semester in college lies ahead, but Sansa can't do it without her best friend Jeyne, who might just lose her soccer scholarship due to a shoulder injury. Sansa finds comfort in an unlikely source: her neighbor at the Red Keep.

**Notes:**

This is a complete rewrite of an older PWP, and will be a lot more plot than (eventual) smut. Apologies that this chapter doesn't yet feature Sansa and Tyrion; I will post that up tomorrow after I've had a chance to do some edits.

i

As a student at twenty-two, Sansa was in her last year of college in King's Landing. She'd spent the four years past studying social economics while she played competitive soccer alongside her best friend since childhood, Jeyne. Their final semester was set to resume in a few weeks, but rather than relax and party their assess off like their peers, the Northern girls had chosen to work together at a local diner during the day, and training when their shifts ended to keep their soccer skills fine-tuned.

They were seated on the park benches, Jeyne drying off her sweaty legs with a Team Direwolf towel, while Sansa drained the last remnants of her sports drink as strands of her hair blew about her face.

"Gods," said Jeyne with a groan; she dropped the towel to the ground, reached her left hand to her right shoulder and twisted trying to reach the right spot.

Sansa set her bottle on the other side of her, then scooted closer to Jeyne. "Here," she said, guiding her best friend to turn around. She worked her thumbs into Jeyne's shoulder, frowned when the other girl grimaced. "Jeyne, I think it's time to-"

"Honestly," Jeyne begun, leaning into Sansa's touch. She closed her eyes, winced and groaned at once. "It'll be fine."

Pursing her lips, Sansa arched an eyebrow in disbelief. "We have five weeks until the semester starts."

Jeyne pulled away, turned on the seat and brought her bent right leg up onto the bench as she faced Sansa.

"My father would gladly pay for any treatment," Sansa stated, taking Jeyne's hands in hers. "Come on, wouldn't you rather play without pain than risk completely fucking your shoulder?"

Jeyne brought her and Sansa's joined hands to her stomach. "Yes. But the reality is physical therapy won't fix this. We've done the tape thing. We've done the exercises that one private physiotherapist we chatted to said would help, and-" She stopped, opened her mouth to say something more, but whatever she intended to say next caused tears to come to her eyes.

Sansa released her right hand, lifted it to Jeyne's cheek. "You can do the semester again."

But tears leaked down Jeyne's cheeks. "Not without my scholarship."

Sansa's brow creased with confusion. "Scholarship?"

Jeyne lowered her gaze, ashamed. "I-I never told you, and it's been four years and I know I should have said something... but I only got in because of soccer."

Shaking her head, Sansa moved closer to her friend, "But, your grades were the same as mine."

Sadness etched Jeyne's face. "Yeah. But you're a Stark. And me, well I'm... I'm not."

Sansa lowered her hand back to Jeyne's and squeezed them. She'd truly had no idea of Jeyne's trouble getting into college alongside her, and wished she'd known long before now so she could have figured out a way to help her be here out of her own right - like she should have been - instead of a tightly-ruled scholarship.

The pair sat there in silence, foreheads resting together for the longest while. Sansa's mind raced with ideas on what she could do. She could ask her father to step in - he was the Mayor of Winterfell, so surely there were strings he could pull. If not, her mother had connections that she might be able to use - Sansa seemed to recall Petyr Baelish had been a childhood friend, and he himself was one of the college board members.

Furthermore, Sansa was surrounded by Lannisters and Baratheons where they had allowed her to stay in the Red Keep with them; she'd hated it for so long, even tried to stay with Jeyne when one of Jeyne's roommates had finished college, but Cersei Baratheon had stopped her. Sansa could remember hearing comments about 'no daughter of Eddard Stark will share a dormitory with common riff-raff', but she'd passed it off as snobbery and mad requests of her parents and let it be what it was.

"I've got to get back to my dorm," Jeyne announced, breaking Sansa from her thoughts.

Sansa pulled back, gazed at her friend. Dorm life, in her limited experience, had been so much more lively than life at the Red Keep. There was something strange about living in single-room apartments that people from hundreds of years ago had ate, slept and fucked in.

She watched in disappointment with herself as Jeyne bent down to pick up her towel and stuffed it, and her own drink bottle, into her bag.

"You need a hand?" Sansa asked, rising to her feet.

"No, I'm good."

Jeyne swung her bag over her good shoulder and pushed herself upright. Sansa noticed the little grimace on her face, but said nothing aloud; inside, she vowed she'd do what she could to ensure Jeyne got the treatment - likely surgery - she needed and got to do another semester so she could finish the degree she'd worked her ass off to achieve.

"I'll text you later," Jeyne said then.

Sansa nodded, "Text you later."

The shorter, and younger, of the two friends left then, and Sansa stood beside the bench, hands as restless as her mind.

She turned halfway around, facing the field. This had been their dream since they were young girls; while Robb and Jon had gone on to do criminal studies and then entered the Northern Police Academy to train as new recruits, Sansa and Jeyne had been thick as thieves on the soccer field from elementary to high school. Soccer wasn't the dream, but it was a pathway to it; they'd get to kick around a ball and burn off excess energy that Mother had sworn was worse than that of the football-loving Arya, and they'd use soccer and their impeccable grades to forge an economic pathway in college.

They'd practically done that already. They were one semester out from having a degree each to frame and hang in their joined future office.

But a holiday back home in Winterfell had seen a drunk Theon hard-tackle an equally-as-drunk Jeyne in a mud wrestling match that even Sansa had protested was too risky given their college soccer careers were so important to them.

So now Jeyne was injured and while it wasn't her legs and she could kick the ball just as well as ever, a fucked shoulder meant passing and catching the ball was greatly hindered.

Sansa could have kicked Theon's ass for this; and she'd vowed when Jeyne had finally confessed to her injured shoulder, that she'd do exactly that the next time she saw him.

Of course, she couldn't do that from King's Landing, and it was too close to the next semester to travel home and do what she'd been fantasizing doing for the past couple of months.

Knowing that she'd likely get a lecture from Cersei if she was caught arriving home so late to the Red Keep, Sansa set about gathering her gear and heading home.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes:**

The Sanrion has arrived! Enjoy ;)

ii

To her surprise, Sansa arrived back to an eerily quiet Red Keep; front reception had informed her the Baratheons were out to some function or another, along with most of the Red Keep's guests and staff. It happened often, but it never went unnoticed and unappreciated. Time alone as she walked the great halls meant Sansa could let her mind drift back to the warring times of the long-forgotten past. She liked to imagine different scenarios of what might have happened back in the day. Coronations, weddings, celebrations, even funerals would have set about a flurry of activity. She'd sometimes slow her steps, let her eyes drift shut, and envision herself wearing one of those long, gorgeous gowns made of rich Essos silk and lace. Her hair would be done up in beautiful braids, her skin kissed with floral fragrances from far off lands. And there'd be a prince, of course. A kind, brave and gentle man who would dance with her in the great hall, kiss her out in the gardens, and make love to her in their oversized feather bed under the light of the moon.

Sansa didn't realize she had stopped in the corridor and had closed her eyes to actually daydream until she heard a rough, "What in the seven hells are you doing?"

Her eyes shot open and immediately met the dark eyes of Sandor Clegane. Even though she and Jeyne had practically befriended the Baratheons more-feared security guy, the sight of him in his all-black suit, shirt, and tie, just knowing he carried a holstered gun on him for work still sent a frightful shiver up her spine.

"Well, girl?"

"I got lost in thought," was all she said. "You aren't with the Baratheons?"

He grunted, "The King didn't want me to frighten any of the visiting businessmen, nor their hoity-toity wives."

Sansa fought back the smile that threatened to curve her lips. "Well, hoity-toity wives are easily frightened," she said.

Sandor grinned.

A momentary silence fell between them when he asked her: "Your lovely friend isn't with you tonight?"

Jeyne, she mused. Sandor had taken quite the shine to the Jeyne, and Sansa likewise knew that Jeyne had a sizeable crush on the man. It was all about the suit, and the gun, which amused her greatly. "No," she soon said, adjusting the strap of her bag where it started to dig into her shoulder. "Not tonight; we're ordering in pizza tomorrow evening if you're keen to join?"

He chuffed, mumbling, "Fucking pizza."

Sansa couldn't help but smile; protest though he did, the best thing she'd learned about him was that Sandor Clegane fucking loved pizza. Once a month she and Jeyne ordered a few of their favorite dishes to the Red Keep, and left Sansa's door open to entice a corridor-wandering Sandor in for a bite. And it worked, without fail, each and every time.

"I'll be there," Sandor soon growled. "Best you be on your way, and have a good night," he said, and he was on his way past her.

"You too," she replied in an almost sing-song kind of way.

Truth be told, she had been deathly afraid of Sandor when she first arrived at the Red Keep. That was certainly worsened for a time by Petyr Baelish's insistence that the gruff security guard was indeed far scarier than she could ever have imagined. But she'd soon cottoned on to what Baelish's intentions were - he meant to make her so afraid of everyone in the Keep that she damn near slept with both eyes open and a bat in her hand for protection - and then, she learned that Sandor Clegane was a former soldier who served in the same war as her own father. Sure, almost every part of him lacked grace, unlike the men who worked with Father back in Winterfell, but he had proven to her and Jeyne that he was a good man deep inside.

Sansa wouldn't say she had a knack for reading people, but enough time spent reading through psychology books with her brother Robb before he left for college had given her a few insights she supposed Baelish - and the rest of them here - hadn't expected from her. It meant reading Baelish had become especially easy, and she had near-expertly managed to avoid private conversations alone with him ever again.

As for the Keep, and King's Landing as a whole, she'd long ago decided their political and mental machinations were of no interest to her, and so she'd stuck to her studies, her soccer, and hanging out with people of her own choosing; people like Jeyne, Sandor, and of course, Tyrion Lannister.

Sansa was walking again by now, taking quicker strides to return to her room and get her clothes ready so she could take a bath after so many hours of training in the late day sunlight.

She turned the corner that led to the spiral stairs leading to her floor next, when she stopped suddenly, dead in her steps.

There before her, at the center of the great spiral stairs was Tyrion, his laptop perched atop his lap and a matching black and red headset on his head. His ashen locks were a bedraggled mess, and he looked overly comfortable in a white gaming t-shirt and a pair of dark grey cargo shorts.

The unexpected sight of her startled him and she watched as he clutched at his chest, gasping dramatically for air.

Sansa's lips twisted in amusement.

"Gods, woman! You need to learn how to announce your presence," Tyrion quickly chastised, turning his attention back to his laptop.

Tyrion was sister to Cersei Baratheon, but was nothing at all like her. To Sansa's delight. Where Cersei was cold, coarse and ultimately a bitch to all in sundry, Tyrion was sarcastic, intelligent, and fun to mess with.

Sansa pretended to think about his request for a moment.

"Nah, I really don't. How about you move, huh?"

"Move?" He didn't lift his gaze. "Why in Westeros would I do that?"

Stifling an amused chuckle, Sansa stepped forward, up three steps, and peered over the laptop to see what Tyrion was playing. Expecting a role-playing game like Fallout, or even Super Mario which he talked about enjoying so much, she was surprised to see him playing something that was, well, nothing at all like his usual games.

"What's this you're playing?"

"Playing?"

Tyrion finally looked up and quickly widened his eyes in response to her closeness to him. "Sansa," he said, pausing to let out a low sigh. "This is a physics simulator. It is not a game, ergo I am not 'playing' anything. I am, if you must know, in the middle of a particularly challenging level."

Not only was he famed in the Red Keep for his hours spent gaming - professionally, he'd claimed, due to making so much money from streaming the games he played - he was also bookish and highly intelligent.

She'd grown to adore all of that about him, and was going to miss him more than anything else about King's Landing at the end of her next semester when she'd return home with Jeyne to set up their own business.

She gazed at him, asked, "I thought you were good at physics?"

Tyrion looked at her with a double-take, furrowing his brow. "I am not 'good' at physics." He dropped his gaze to his laptop and hit one of the keys. He remained silent and Sansa watched the way his eyes flickered with small movements. Very soon, a smirk spread across his lips – one she knew only too well as being of deep, almost maniacal satisfaction – and when it reached its fullness Tyrion lifted his gaze and met Sansa's once more. "I excel at physics. I'm-"

"-in my way," Sansa pointed out, pursing her lips.

He stared at her, unmoved.

They'd known each other for three of the past four years. Quite well, in fact, due to Cersei thinking it best to put the Unwanted Stark and the Unlovable Lannister on the same floor, and in rooms side-by-side for that matter. They'd greeted each other daily in that time, sometimes twice a day if not more, and they spent their lengthier conversations rambling away about their individual interests with very little of it meeting in the middle and providing any kind of coherent conversation to outside observers.

And yet...

And yet three years of being kind of, sort of roommates meant they bantered the shit out of each other, knew each other better than anyone else, and even enjoyed setting up pranks for the staff, and even Cersei and Robert when they thought they could get away with it - and they always did.

Bending so her face was leaning close to Tyrion's, Sansa said, "Move, or else."

And fuck she loved it.

His breath hitched in his throat, causing him to practically squeak. "Or else what?"

Sansa smiled threateningly, searching his eyes. "Do you really want to find out, Tyrion? I mean, really?"

Looking back down at his laptop, Tyrion wet his lips, half catching his breath, half chuckling in fear.

"My father always taught me a little use of one's manners goes a long way." He looked her in the eye then, giving her a 'matter of fact' glare. "I've said it once, I'll say it a thousand times more: soccer has been your undoing as a proper lady, Sansa. "

Standing straight, Sansa smiled down at him. Finally, Tyrion smiled back.

Settling against the grand pillar of the stairwell, her threat for him to move having just been part of their usual banter and not at all serious, she asked, "How was your championship game today?"

Tyrion closed his laptop, held it to the front of him as he stood up and turned to face Sansa. "Great. Until my cunt of a sister had the power and internet cut at the exact moment I would have won the game for us."

She growled low in her chest. "And Robert doesn't... stop her from doing this shit to you?"

He tilted his head to the side, "Making my life a misery is foreplay for them."

Sansa shuddered, "Just the thought!"

Tyrion motioned up the stairs, "Anyway, how was training today?"

She followed alongside him as they climbed the steps. "Good, though the walk from there has made my legs burn a bit. You'd think they'd be used to it by now."

He glanced up at her, "Massaging some ointment in would help."

"Yeah. And a bath. A bath, then a massage." Sansa's mind played out images of sharing the bath with him, of lying abed on her stomach while he massaged every inch of her naked form.

Feeling her cheeks, neck, and chest begin to burn, she cleared her throat and forced her mind onto something more important.

"You've got contacts at the college, right?"

The moment she asked the question, though, knowing what she intended by finding out, made her feel awkward and ashamed. Awkward because Jeyne would kick her ass if she knew what she was asking, and also because Tyrion had become one of her only other friends in the past three years, and ashamed because she felt like even thinking of asking Tyrion if he might be able to put her into contact with someone who could help was an abuse of their relationship.

Tyrion surprised her though.

"Is this about that friend of yours? Jeyne?"

They reached the top of the stairs and came out unto their corridor. Her face burned a little more. "Yeah, Jeyne."

"I noticed she wasn't using her right arm much during the recent pizza night."

Shit he's observant, she thought. "Yeah, that fuckhead Theon messed her shoulder up tackling her in a mud-wrestling pit back home a while back."

They walked in silence a bit, and Sansa wondered if Tyrion was judging her for even attempting to ask for a favor relating to a girl he only knew because he was forced to share a floor with Sansa.

But, he surprised her again.

"I'll speak with Varys; he has his ways of fixing problems. Does she have treatment lined up?"

Sansa didn't know what to say. She fumbled through, "Thank you-um, no. Not yet. She was going to play through the pain so she doesn't lose her scholarship."

"Of course," he said, sighing. "Well, she's a nice girl and almost has her degree; we won't let her slip through the cracks."

Tyrion placed his hand on Sansa's arm then, stopping her in her steps.

His touch warmed her, it felt like he was able to reach through to her very soul, and when he pulled his hand back to cradle his laptop she almost wished she was that laptop.

Oh fuck, I've been reading too many sappy romance novels late at night. Calm down, Sansa.

"Thank you," she heard herself say again. "I mean it, what you're doing is... I don't know how I could ever repay you."

Tyrion smiled a small smile. "Your friendship these past few years is more than enough," he said, and she believed he meant it. "Truthfully, I... I'd..." he stammered, lowering his head.

He swore aloud at himself and Sansa, hating to see Tyrion ever treat himself that way, moved over and gently nudged him with her hip. It made him smile, and when he looked up at her again, he blurted, "I'd really do anything with you. For you, I mean! Gods!"

She felt her stomach warm and go all fluttery. "With?" she gently pressed, a smile curving the corner of her mouth as his face went a deep crimson.

Tyrion started walking again, groaning in frustration at himself, and she watched him for a silent moment. Part of her was saying, don't you dare think more into this than has been said, but she couldn't and wouldn't lie either: she'd refused many offers for dates because there was literally only one person in this stupid city that caught her eye. And it wasn't his looks, though Tyrion was certainly handsome, but his mind that made her wake up in the middle of the night unable to get her thoughts away from the erotic dreams she'd had of them together.

Decided in her next plan of action, Sansa released her bag and let it fall to the ground with a thud.

The action caused Tyrion to turn and face her; he had an expression that said 'you don't really see me as someone you want to do the horizontal tango with' and another that said 'gods be damned, I want you' - because that's exactly how she was looking at him.

They stood there, staring at each other, that look on both their faces, when slowly, carefully, Tyrion crouched for just long enough to set his laptop on the floor. With it placed down with care, he stood upright and Sansa joined him in taking a calming breath.

"You don't... have to... not for your friend," he stammered.

Sansa nodded, "This isn't." She reached for the hem of her sports tank top

"Wait," Tyrion said.

The first flutter of nerves hit her, and Sansa stood oh so very still as he stepped over his laptop and crossed the distance between them and stopped before her.

Now in front of her, only a step away, Tyrion grabbed the hem of his own t-shirt, and together they removed their upper garments and tossed them to the floor in a heap. Sansa stood in her shorts and sports bra, while Tyrion was shirtless, a mat of fine hairs on his chest.

Their gaze locked on each other, their eyes shimmered with pure joy.

Tyrion reached for Sansa's right hand and, with a tenderness she wasn't expecting, he kissed her palm, her wrist, and slowly he placed fiery kisses along the inside of her arm to her inner elbow. Sansa felt the yearning within her growing, spreading throughout every part of her body; it reached into places she didn't know could feel what she did right now.

Tyrion's ministrations moved to her quickly rising and falling abdomen and Sansa brought her hands to his well-muscled back and drew slow, sensual circles into his warm skin.

He kissed her stomach all over, going down to the waistband of her shorts, then in an ascent - first her navel, then the edge of her rib cage, and that's when she paid attention to his hands. His hands caressed her hips, her lower back. His touch drew her closer to him with each shuddered breath. She'd never been touched like this before. Never felt so alive, so present. He slipped his hands a little further up, damn near making her breathless with kisses trailing her abdomen, then shifting to her right breast. She felt the heat of his breath through the fabric, felt the tenderness of his kisses. The yearning inside deepened, it moved through her, brought her to and fro the present and those dreams she'd had of them making love in the library he spent so much of his time in.

Then, "Sansa," came his hoarse voice, and Sansa felt Tyrion pull away from her. Hollowness rushed at her, made it feel as though half her world had disappeared.

With a pained heart, she let out a shaken breath. "This is... this is okay," she said, wanting him to believe her.

Their gaze met and they were both taking small breaths, trying to say something that words would inevitably screw up.

"I'm 34," Tyrion sighed, and she could hear the guilt in his voice. "You, you're so much younger, and you-"

"And I-" Sansa interjected, her heart aching as she stepped closer to him, closing that gods-awful gap that had grown between them. Searching his eyes, she murmured, "-have never wanted anyone the way I want you."

He frowned, disbelieving. "I'm not. You don't. Not really."

Sansa leaned down and brought her mouth to his then, and the moment their lips met she felt a rush of desire. She hoped he felt it too. And he must have, because his hesitance was momentary and soon he returned the kiss, passionate and desperate like he wasn't sure if she really did want this. She did though. She wanted him very much.


End file.
